As online content delivery and interaction has become ubiquitous, online service providers have developed and are continuing to develop features to distinguish themselves from each other. From personalized content pages to highly interactive multi-media content, a variety of online features are currently being offered in the battle to attract new users and to retain existing users. These features are generally integrated within the offered content, however, some features may operate as independent applications (e.g. chat dialog boxes) that cooperate with offered content. These features are designed with the thought that in operation they engage participating users to request additional content.
Currently, several features are automatically integrated in offered content. These schemes have been implemented for automatically integrating associations for initiating these described online functions, features, and operations. Exemplary functions, features, and operations may include automatically addressing an e-mail message, performing a look up in a cooperating database, providing a hyperlink to one or more Internet web pages, and providing enhanced content.
One current scheme for employing an associated link involves user selection of individual words, phrases, or names in content offered by offline computing applications that is viewable on a display screen. In operation, a context sensitive menu is automatically provided to the user for the selected word, phrase, or name. However, the context sensitive menu is based on a predefined list of words, phrases and names that may be stored in a static data store cooperating with the offline computing application. For example, using this scheme, if a user selects the text “Barry Bonds” within generated or stored content, a short biography of the baseball player Barry Bonds may automatically be called up from a local, cooperating data file and displayed to the participating user. For words, phrases, or names not in the predefined list, when the user manually selects the word, phrase or name, this scheme may either initiate the execution of a cooperating application (e.g. online dictionary) but does not offer additional enhanced content.
The incorporation and execution of associated links in online content is generally realized through a string of communications between the computing application that displays the content (and corresponding associated links) and the content server housing and generating the desired content. In operation, content may be requested by a participating user through a computing application from a content server. The content server, in response, may aggregate relevant content for distribution to the requesting computing application. As part of request fulfillment, the content may be processed by the server before distribution to the requesting computing application to determine if associated links are to be incorporated into the content to be distributed. Stated differently, prior to distributing the aggregated and/or generated content to the requesting computing application, the content server may parse the content and compare the content to a list of predefined associated links to determine if these associated links are to be included in the distributed content. Additional communications subsequently occur between the computing application and the content server when participating users interact with offered associated links. These communications may result in a number of events including but not limited to the distribution of enhanced content, the execution of cooperating computing applications, the execution of a search feature, etc.
However, there are a number of limiting factors with current schemes to incorporate and execute associated links in online content. First, current schemes place a heavy burden on content servers to perform significant processing when offering associated links thereby draining valuable content server resources that may be better used to attend to additional content requests. Secondly, by having the content server process associated links, there is an increase in latency between the content request and request fulfillment. This latency directly impacts participating users' content navigation and interaction experiences. Lastly, current schemes don not allow for portability of content having associated links between cooperating client-side computing applications. That is, online content is generally displayed to participating users through a browser application. However, today's word-processing and email applications are now capable of displaying online content that was once viewable only on computer browser-type applications. In operation, these non-browser computing applications are capable of displaying and executing online content but are not in communication with the content server that offers the content. The online content may be imported into these non-browser type applications or in the case of an e-mail application may be included as part of an e-mail. In either event, under current schemes, associated links that would be displayable on browser-type computing applications are not displayable on non-browser-type computing applications as these latter type of computing applications are generally not in communication with the content servers processing such associated links.
Therefore it is appreciated that there exists a need for a system and methods that integrate and employ associated links in content that overcome the prior art.